


Chained To The Rhythm

by AgentOklahoma



Series: Chained To The Rhythm [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, Freeform, M/M, Pop star!secret identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-10 04:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentOklahoma/pseuds/AgentOklahoma
Summary: “I’ve worked my ass off keeping my identity under wraps and you want me to risk that, risk my own operation, for some stupid Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana bullshit mission because none of you thought about piano lessons?” Jason spat. “No. I’m out. You deal with this shit yourselves."OrThe AU where Jason has to assume a pop-star identity for a case and it goes way further than intended.





	1. Chapter 1

In all his years as a Robin, dealing with the bats in general, or working in _any_ sort of team, Jason Todd has still not gotten used to the convoluted methods that heroes came up with in order to achieve goals.

“Why don’t you just hire someone as bait?” Jason drawled out, watching Tim and Bruce fiddle with a small device attached to a bow tie like they had for the last _45 minutes_.

“We’re not using civilians in this. Not when the last three musicians that have performed at the Maria have ended up dead,” Bruce said, his tone holding absolutely no room for argument. Jason turned his helmeted head towards Roy in a silent ‘do you understand the bullshit I worked with?’ but Roy wasn’t paying attention, a furrow to his brow showing that the cogs were turning. A look that, more often than not, meant terrible things for Jason.

The case was fairly simple. A popular hang-out spot for some of Gotham’s most brutal cartels and gangs made it a habit of recruiting young singers and musicians (someone likely to travel often and with attendants), forcing them into their drug smuggling ring and when they refused, the bodies were either found the next day or not at all. They intended on sending one of their own in as a potential recruit, the only issue being that none of them had all that much in the ways of musical talent. Bruce could play a few instruments but with the unfortunate requirement that all the musicians had to be under the age of 30, he was immediately removed from the list.

They wanted to send in Tim. Tim, who’s normal singing voice was the equivalent of a cat being forced into a bathtub. But they intended on fixing it with a voice modulator.

A few of them were still hesitant and rightfully so. The device could only do so much and it would become very apparent that the voice was being altered but Tim insisted that he could make it work.

“I just don’t get why you guys aren’t using the obvious choice,” Roy queried aloud. The bats all stared at him.

“What choice?” Dick asked from his seat at the computer console. “Its not like any of us are singers. Cass is a dancer but they’re not really looking for that,” he added. Roy just gestured to Jason. There was silence and the slowly increasing look of exasperation on Roy’s face while Jason bristled, shaking his head at his friend.

“Seriously? He sings. And plays, like, half the instruments in an orchestra,” Roy pointed out. He just received blank looks back.

“Jason? Sings? And plays music?” Dick asked incredulously.

“Uh, yeah? You’ve never-? Seriously?” Roy asked, pulling out his phone.

“Harper, the fuck are you-“ Jason growled as Roy plugged his phone into the batcave console, scrolling through files until he lets out a triumphant ‘ha!’. And plays a video file that has Jason scrambling to remove the phone and smash it into as many pieces as it will go, but was only barely held back by Roy, dragged to the floor and pinned while he shoved and snarled at his friend to ‘ _turn it the fuck off’._

The video showed Jason in a small apartment kitchen, one that most of the bats recognized as Roy’s. He was busy cooking something, facing away from the camera (making it obvious that Roy was recording him without him noticing) with his hips and shoulders swaying, singing along to something on the radio while Lian danced in that flailing way three year olds did right beside him. Dick covered his mouth, trying to stifle a laugh at the charming domestic scene while Tim, Bruce and Damian paid a little more attention to Jason’s voice. While it was obvious he wasn’t trying very hard to sing well, there were signs that he could should he choose to.

Video-Jason moved away from the counter and wiped his hands on a dishtowel, picking Lian up and holding her on one hip as he danced a little more, belting out the chorus. It wasn’t until he looked towards the camera that he realized what Roy had been doing and was quick to put Lian down and tackle the laughing archer, the video cutting out. The Bats all turned to look at the real life counterpart. Jason was lying on the ground with Roy sitting on his back, mask hiding his face but there were muffled curses directed towards Roy.

“You’re fired, you fuck,” Jason growled.

“I don’t work for you,” Roy countered.

“Fired from being my friend, now get off me before I set your fucking workshop on fire and dance on the ashes,” he threatened. Roy picked himself up and went to help Jason up, just to have his hand shoved away as Jason stood on his own, brushing off his uniform roughly.

“Come on, Jaybird. You know you’re the best option,” Roy implored.

“No.”

“If Jason doesn’t want to, we can’t exactly force him to,” Dick piped up but Roy just ignored him.

“You know if they send Tim in, this mission’s gonna fail before he’s even opened his mouth.”

“It’s not my first undercover job, Harper,” Tim snapped.

“I get that but you think they won’t place Tim Drake’s face as soon as you walk in the door? Even if that voice modulator didn’t just fuck with the sound equipment and no-one in the joint noticed that your voice was being altered, you’d be spotted in seconds. You’re kinda recognizable,” Roy pointed out.

“We use disguises all the time-“

“Yeah, that’ll melt off in spotlights before you’ve finished the first verse,” Roy cut in. Jason just stood beside him, shoulders hunching and his helmet turned towards Roy, hiding what everyone assumed had to be a death glare of immense proportions. “You need someone people won’t recognize straight away. Jason Todd has been dead for seven years and wasn’t exactly a camera-friendly Wayne-adoptee. Your face is hidden from everyone in the criminal world. Just give you a new name-“

“No.”

“Put some contacts in, maybe show some charm for the audience-“

“I said no, Arsenal!” Jason snapped, his voice echoing in the immense cave.

Roy gave Jason a look of frustration while Dick stood from his chair and approached Jason.

“Jason, Roy might be right on this. People have died, this needs to stop. You’re the best option,” He implores.

“I’ve worked my ass off keeping my identity under wraps and you want me to risk that, risk my own operation, for some stupid Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana bullshit mission because none of you thought about piano lessons?” Jason spat. “No. I’m out. You deal with this shit yourselves,” he added, stalking off towards his motorcycle. Dick and Roy called out to him, their voices drowned out by the roar of his engine as he peeled out, aiming to put as much distance between himself and the Bats as he could.

-

Jason wasn’t surprised when Roy hunted him down the next day, the archer flopping onto the rooftop beside him while Jason had a smoke break in the middle of his patrol. The only reason Jason didn’t just bolt straight away being that his ankle was sore from a rough landing early in the night and he didn’t quite feel up to getting up if he didn’t _have_ to.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” Jason mumbled from around his cigarette.

“Didn’t think you did, buddy. Just wanted to update you on the case.”

“Arsenal-“

“A new body washed up on the riverbank. Lily Parrish. 19 years old,” Roy turned his phone towards Jason, showing a young woman’s body, dark skin mottled with bruises, the worst focused around her throat. Jason let out a sigh and makes a move to get up, to get himself out of the conversation.

“Harper-“

“You know, Lian wants to be a dancer. I know last week she wanted to be a zookeeper but now, she wants to be a dancer. And a world where pieces of shit take advantage of young, idealistic people just to strangle them and throw them away like nothing…I don’t want her being exposed to that. So I’m gonna do what I can to make sure my little girl can do what her heart desires without worrying that _they_ -“ Roy points sharply towards the rest of Gotham. “are gonna get their filthy hands on her. You gonna help me do that? Or are you gonna let the Bats fuck it up doing it their way?”

Jason took another drag of his cigarette.

“My name better be fucking good.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely responses to the first chapter of this fic. I'm really enjoying writing it and I hope you all enjoy what I produce further along the road.

**Chapter Two**

“I feel like an asshole,” Jason murmurs to Stephanie, who walks beside him, the stylishly asymmetrical black wig forcing him to double take to remind himself who she is. Jason is a little more casually dressed than his companion, an off-white v-neck and jeans to her absurdly tall heels and form fitting dress that likely cost more than half his safehouses.

“Well you look great, just keep smiling Mister Belemonte or you’ll look like an angry vigilante and not a charming, aspiring singer,” Stephanie coaxes, guiding Jason through the club’s busy tables towards the stage. Jason catches a few looks from some of the patrons, mostly older women giving him hungry looks and their men snarling out silent warnings for him.

“Mister Belemonte?” a voice calls and it took Jason a second longer than it should have to bring his attention to the voice’s owner. The club owner from their dossier, Logan Price, with a wide smile on his face and open arms. “Pleasure to meet you. Handsome young man he is,” he stage-whispers to Stephanie, who just smiles politely.

“Well, I’m sure Nicolás would love to warm up for his set. Would you mind terribly showing us to his space?” she asks and Logan nods, waving them along behind a windowed door to the back of the building. Backstage was just as busy as the front of house, stage hands adjusting wires, setting soundboards and darting around the trio on their way to wherever it was they were going.

Jason is guided into a small dressing room, a lit up vanity and a worn couch taking up the majority of the space. Jason placed his case down, eyeing the potential exits or viewpoints into the room but finding very little. This was meant to be a small, moderately sound-proofed space for acts to practice in so it made sense that you make it difficult to hear inside.

“We’ll come give you warning when it is time for you to come on stage, Mister Belemonte. Please, help yourself to whatever you’d like and if you’d like anything that isn’t already provided, call and I’ll happily provide,” Logan assured, making his way out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

“No fucking way is that douche-canoe in charge of this place. Figure-head, nothing more,” Jason points out.

“Agreed,” Stephanie murmurs, putting in her earpiece. “BG here, Cyrus is in his dressing room. No sign of any sort of illegal activity as of yet,” she reports.

“Other than the stagehand doing a line of coke off his phone behind the speakers. I swear to god, if I end up getting electrocuted because some coked up asshole is in charge of lighting, I’m gonna be pissed,” Jason spits out.

“No one’s getting electrocuted, Hood. Calm down. Go warm up that voice of yours. Critics these days are brutal,” Tim drawls. Jason kicks the couch and sits down at the vanity in a huff, taking out his guitar and tuning it for the fifth time that day.

“I’ve never seen you this nervous on a mission before, Hood. Does our murder-happy big brother have stage fright?” Stephanie teased, getting a finger in reply from Jason but nothing else.

“Focus on the case, Batgirl,” Bruce chides.

“BG, can you find somewhere around the bar to set up a bug?” Tim suggests. Stephanie is quick to agree, slipping out of the dressing room and leaving Jason to his own devices. It takes every ounce of self-restraint he has to not just bolt out of the room. A quiet beep lets him know someone is attempting to contact him on a private channel.

“You sure you’re alright, Hood?” Tim’s voice nudges, cautious in a way that showed concern.

“I’m fine, Replacement. Just focus on getting enough evidence to put these assholes away before I just blow the building,” he bites out before switching back to the open channel.

“We’ll all be laughing about this someday, Little Wing,” Dick attempts to lighten the mood.

“If anyone says anything about this mission after today, I will ruin you,” Jason snaps back. He lets out a deep breath, fingers itching for his cigarettes but they were left at his safehouse. Bad form to smoke before a performance, he remembers that much. He mutes his comms before he warms up his voice with a few random songs he plucks out of his head while he waits for someone to come and get him. He doesn’t need to be amazing. Just good enough for them to call back. To want to keep him around and maybe use him as a smuggler. That’s all.

“Mister Belemonte?” a voice calls from the doorway. A stagehand Jason recalls passing by. “You’re needed on stage,” she explains. Jason nods, fingers tight around the neck of the guitar as he makes his way out of the dressing room, following the woman to the steps leading onto the stage. The three little half-steps looked more daunting than a high-rise in the center of Gotham.

“Please welcome our lovely up-and-coming artist, Nicolás Belemonte,” Logan introduces him, one hand wrapped around a microphone and the other extended towards Jason, motioning him onto the stage. Jason is momentarily blinded by the spotlight that trains on him almost immediately and he tenses up without meaning to, the sudden lack of awareness of who’s around him making him wary. But he pushes it down and puts on a smile, waving to the patrons as he positions himself in front of the stationary microphone.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen. A pleasure to be here,” Jason says into the microphone, giving the ladies in the front tables a wink and a grin. He breathes in, the strings biting into his callused fingertips as he plucks out an intro.

“ _The club isn’t the best to find a lover_  
so the bar is where I go  
Me and my friends at the table doing shots  
Drinking fast and then we talk slow.”

-

Jason’s voice doesn’t come from his comm unit, having been muted in his dressing room, but instead from Stephanie’s and the bug she’d planted in the bar. It gives Tim pause.

“Master Jason was never one for performing,” Alfred mentioned from the side of the console, watching Jason on the stage.

“He could sing before-…before?” Tim asked.

“Quite well. Not in the presence of others, of course. He was more likely to sing to himself whilst cooking or in the library when he was studying. Something to chase away the silence, I suppose,” Alfred mused. “Literature was more his interest, poetry and the like. Most of his interest in music was from a lyrical perspective. A piece could sound like nails on a chalkboard but if the writing was well-crafted, he was always interested,” he added.

“Sounds far from nails on a chalkboard, I can say that much,” Stephanie murmurs from her end of the comms, stalking around the back of the bar. Jason seemed…comfortable. Far more comfortable than he’d been preparing for the role. Memorising Nicolás Belemonte’s background and set lists was like pulling teeth but on the stage, its almost natural. He finishes the first song with a smile, plucking a few notes that hum through the speakers before he picks out a new, slightly more fast paced song.

This one was not in the original set list Tim had worked on.

_“Sí, sabes que ya llevo un rato mirándote  
Tengo que bailar contigo hoy.”_

Tim doesn’t recognize it at all. He shakes his head and goes back to picking out faces at the table and what Logan Price was doing. The so-called owner was engaged in a conversation with a heavy-set man in the back of the room, opposite Stephanie. Logan’s blonde head was nodding emphatically to something then he motions to Stephanie. She faces the stage, watching them from her peripheral vision, making sure she seemed appropriately surprised when Logan approaches her.

“Miss Kentworth, if you would please. An associate of mine was interested in your lovely boy’s services for future events if you would like to meet with him,” Logan explains.

“Holy shit, its working,” Dick murmurs through the comms, watching the display on his phone from outside. His backup doesn’t seem to be required but they hadn’t wanted to take any chances, especially with Red Hood so thoroughly unarmed. “He’s only two songs in,” he sounds _proud_.

“Yep. Our little boy is growing up to be a great drug smuggler,” Tim reminds. “Hood, if you can hear me, wink at the woman in red in the front, to your left,” he requests. Jason follows the instruction, the music not faltering for a moment. The woman doesn’t look all that special. Pretty, sure. But Jason can’t recall her from the mission files. Her cheeks flush and she giggles, covering her smile with her hand.

“Perfect. You’ve just flirted with Alexa Boese, daughter of Mikael Boese, second in charge of the Russian drug cartel and primary suspect in the deaths of our smugglers-to-be,” Tim explains in a deadpan voice.

“What?!” Dick’s voice screeches from the comm, almost loud enough to make Jason flinch as he finishes the song. The room applauds and launches back into the set list, praying that Tim had a perfectly reasonable thought process behind having him paint that target on his back.

“Boese is notoriously protective of his daughter, known for his actions against her college boyfriend who cheated on her. They weren’t able to find his second testicle,” Tim mentions far too offhandedly and Jason wants to find this little shit and kick his ass so badly at that moment. “He’s also the most sickeningly doting father that ensures that whatever his girl wants, she gets. Including the ‘total hottie on stage at the Maria, #thethirstisreal’.”

“Just spoke with Boese,” Stephanie murmurs as she sashays back towards the entrance to. “We have a meeting with him next Thursday to discuss ‘future employment opportunities’,” she repeats with a thick Russian accent, pushing through the doorway and heading towards the edge of the stage. She watches as Jason moves on to the last song for the first half of the set list. The stage persona he’d adopted seemed to slip away a little as he sang, a furrow to his brow and an earnest look on his face as he swayed along to the tempo.

“Where’re you getting these songs?” Tim murmurs into the comms, typing furiously.

“What do you mean? You picked the set list, didn’t you?” Stephanie asks, holding her phone to her ear to make the fact that she was talking to herself slightly less suspicious.

“It-…never mind,” Tim replies, ending the conversation. Sure, Stephanie didn’t recognize the words but it was probably just some indie track that hadn’t made it onto popular radio yet. Maybe Jason had picked it out for the set without Tim knowing.

“ _Turn it up keep it on repeat,_  
stumbling around like a wasted zombie  
Yeah we think we’re free  
Drink, this one’s on me  
We’re all chained to the rhythm  
To the rhythm  
To the rhythm.”

That had to be it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so because I'm such a terrible lyricist, what I'll be doing is using existing songs (unless stated otherwise) but for the sake of the story, we're pretending Jason wrote them (I'll credit each artist/cover artist at the end of every chapter. I'll also post the songs/covers for each chapter here for your enjoyment :) For reference, I headcanon Jason's singing voice as something similar to Alejandro Luis Manzano from Boyce Avenue so a lot of the songs here will be covers they've done.
> 
> Feel free to message me on tumbr (agentoklahoma or agentoakysart) if you have headcanons or comments
> 
> -
> 
> Shape of you (Covered by Boyce Avenue originally by Ed Sheeran): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm4B-A_e8Zc
> 
> Despacito (Covered by Boyce Avenue originally by Luis Fonsi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mA82CWRopw
> 
> Chained to the Rhythm (covered by Boyce Avenue, originally by Katy Perry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZhWYw-VGjE


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely comments and all the kudos on this fic, it makes me so happy that people are enjoying it so much and I look forward to you all going on this journey of complete nonsense with me.

**Chapter Three**

“What’s up your ass?” Stephanie asks, sipping noisily at her over-sugared frappucino, peering over Tim’s shoulder at his laptop screen.

“Its nothing,” he insists but as the slurping noise grows longer and louder with his silence, Tim relents. “Its just…two of those songs, they weren’t on the set list. They weren’t even songs, according to the internet. No random indie group, no pop star’s secret single drop. They just came out of thin air,” he explains, gnawing at his thumbnail as he thinks.

“Does it really matter?” Steph asks, flopping onto the seat across the table from him. The café they’d decided to visit that morning was thankfully quiet, their little corner booth remaining undisturbed for the most part. “Like, does the mission life-and-death-rely on the set list Jason uses?” she adds.

“No but…aren’t you curious? That maybe he…” Tim trails off, unsure of how to phrase his theory without it seeming as ridiculous as it does in his head.

“Wait, you think-…the Red Hood. Scourge of Gotham’s underground, _wrote his own songs_ ,” Stephanie asks incredulously.

“Can you think of another explanation?”

Stephanie ponders on it for a moment, sipping at the last of her drink before she pulls out her phone, dialing a number and scooching her chair over to sit right beside Tim, putting the phone on speaker.

“ _’lo?”_

“Hey, Roy? Its Steph and Tim.”

“ _Hey, what’s up? Any developments on the cartel shit?”_

“Not yet, but we were kinda curious about something. It’s about Jason’s singing,” Steph asks, there’s some fabric rustling and movement on the other side of the line before a video appeared on Steph’s phone screen. She adjusted the position so they were in view of the camera, the video call showing Roy sitting on his couch with Lian seated next to him, colouring in.

“ _What about it? Did he choke?”_ Roy asked with a concerned look on his face.

“Not at all, but uh…he improvised the setlist and some of the songs he sang don’t seem to exist. We were wondering if you knew what the songs were,” Tim asks. Roy starts smiling. Not the regular grin he had plastered on his face, this smile is full of mischief as he gets up off the couch, the camera staying aimed at his face on his way down the hall of his apartment. They could hear the muted sounds of guitar and a voice, one they’d become very familiar with a few days earlier. Roy put his finger to his lips just before throwing the door open, his back to the room and the camera angle showing the room behind him.

 _“Roy, the fuck are you-…HARPER, WHAT THE FUCK, GET OUT WITH THAT_!” Jason barks, abandoning the guitar on his lap, scrambling up from his spot on his bed. In his haste to grab Roy and the phone, he upset the papers on the bed; blank sheet music, handwritten pages formatted like lyrics and pencils.

“ _But Jaybird, you have fans. They just wanna know the process behind the music,”_ Roy teases, letting out an ‘oof’ when he’s tackled to the ground and the call cuts out with Roy’s laughter and Jason’s irritated snapping.

Tim and Stephanie sit there, staring at the now blank screen, lost for words.

-

“You shitnugget,” Jay grumbles, sitting with his back to the wall, Roy seated against the opposite wall while their legs brush. Jason nudges Roy’s leg roughly while he rubs the raw spot on his cheek where Roy elbowed him in the struggle for the phone.

“What? You worked hard on those even if you won’t admit it. Credit where credit’s due and all that,” Roy says, getting to his feet and holding his hand out for Jason to take. Jason accepts it, pulling himself up just to gently shove Roy.

“It was just for the mission,” Jason grumbles, heading back into his room to fix the mess he’d made in his attempt to get to Roy. Some of the pages had ripped but he could always just rewrite them.

“You had songs, a whole list of them-“

“Yeah, other people’s music. Rich assholes don’t want to pay for cover artists. They want original. They want something no one else has yet,” Jason replies

“Well. You definitely provided, Jaybird. So, what now? Gonna play along and become a drug runner and bait ‘em into the Bats’ cage?” Roy asks, leaning against the doorframe, watching as Jason picks his guitar up once more, plucking idly at the strings.

“I was thinking something a little more permanent. I think the message needs to sink into the drug community as a whole,” Jason replies. Roy nods thoughtfully.

“And to Nic Belemonte?”

“What?” Jason looks up from his papers. The smile from earlier is gone, replaced by a stony expression he couldn’t place.

“What’s happens to Nicolás Belemonte after all this goes down? Vanishes off the face of the earth? Dies in an ‘accident’?” Roy asks. Jason gently strums the guitar, playing nonsense chords as he thinks on it. He hadn’t thought at all about what he’d do with this newfound identity after this case ended. He could use it again, if it doesn’t end up getting burned when the Boese issue is resolved.

“From what I can tell,” Roy muses, “from what the Bats told me anyway, you enjoyed playing the stage. So maybe, if you can take a few hours off every now and then from your bloody war on crime in Gotham, you could have an identity for yourself,” he adds. Roy waits only a moment, watching Jason’s face, then he walks out of the room, leaving Jason to his thoughts.

-

“So, he writes his own music,” Steph says when the call cuts out. She turns to look at Tim, seeing the cogs turning in his head. “He was always the creative type. Least that’s what Alfred always said,” she added, stirring some of the whipped cream into the rest of her drink.

“Mm.”

“You seem pretty fixated on this,” Steph muses, not quite diverting Tim’s attention from his thoughts.

“Mm.”

“Like maybe you wanna see more of Jason’s singing,” she ponders out loud, the tone of her voice dragging Tim out of his contemplation to see the suggestive look on her face.

“Wait, what? No. I-…Drink your fracking frappucino,” Tim stammers, focusing back on his laptop, the minor flush to his cheeks visible behind the curtain of his shaggy hair.

“Have a thing for a nice set of pipes?” Stephanie teases, leering over his shoulder, watching the red spread up to the tips of his ears. “You know, I’m his manager, I could get you backstage for some groupie action-“

Stephanie lets out a shriek, drawing the attention of the other café patrons when Tim begins a relentless assault on all the ticklish points on his sides he could recall until they got a cough and a filthy look from the waiter and stopped, returning to their casework, leaving thoughts of Jason Todd and his music for the next evening.


End file.
